Today's Toronto Star has an article about walking. Specifically, it points out that a recent study has shown that 45% of people who both live and work downtown, walk to the office. This was thought to be an impressive number for some reason.

Anyway, the article brought a few other things to mind. For instance, one lady interviewed explained that walking from the Distillery District to the Entertainment District (on the far side of downtown) was frequently faster than taking the streetcar. And, not only was the King car slow-moving through traffic, it was also crowded beyond comfort.

This is the TTC's dirty secret -- streetcars and subways in and near downtown are regularly so full (in the peak hours) that you have to be crazy to squeeze yourself on. Everyone talks about adding service in suburban parts of the megacity to increase ridership, but the TTC is actually losing riders because the service is too thin in the core.

(And certainly this affects some suburban riders, too. Who wants to take the subway downtown from Finch Station if you are going to have someone sitting in your lap by the time you get to St. Clair?)